Kierkegaard: A Single Life

by Stephen Backhouse

Publisher:

Zondervan

, 2016

Overview

An accessible, expert introduction to one of the greatest minds of nineteenth century. Whether you’re completely new to him, or if you’re already familiar with his work, Kierkegaard: A Single Life presents a fresh understanding of his life and thought.

Kierkegaard was a brilliant and enigmatic loner whose ideas permeated culture, shaped modern Christianity, and influenced people as diverse as Franz Kafka and Martin Luther King Jr. Though few people today have read his work, that lack of familiarity with the real Kierkegaard is changing with this biography by scholar Stephen Backhouse, who clearly presents the man’s mind as well as the acute sensitivity behind Kierkegaard’s books.

Drawing on biographical material that has newly come to light, Kierkegaard: A Single Life introduces his many guises—the thinker, the lover, the recluse, the writer, the controversialist—in prose as compelling and fluid as a novel and pursues clarity to long-standing questions about him:

• What made this Danish theologian so controversial and influential?
• Why were so many people drawn to his books, even if they didn’t understand what they were reading?
• Can his complicated relationship with the Church and religion be untangled?
• Or, for that matter, what about his complicated—at times almost paradoxical—relationship with every sphere of life from politics to poetry?

To be considered everything from a great intellect to a dandy, from a martyr to a “false messiah” is no mean feat, and this biography sheds light on Søren Kierkegaard as he was with empathy and humor.

Included is an appendix presenting an overview of each of Kierkegaard’s works, for the scholar and lay reader alike.

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Contents

I. A Controversial Life: The funeral and its aftermath
II. Early Life: Birth, childhood and school
III. Family Life: Sisters, Brothers, Mother and Father
IV. Married Life: The courtship, engagement and abandonment of Regine Olsen
V. Writing Life: Publishers, readers and pseudonyms
VI. A Life Mocked: The Corsair and the campaign of public ridicule
VII. An Offensive Life: The attack upon Christendom
VIII. A Life Concluded: The death of Søren Kierkegaard
IX. A Life Continued: How Kierkegaard spread to the rest of the world: charlatans, farmers, Nazis, Panthers and Inklings
Glossary of Names

Product Details

• Title : Kierkegaard: A Single Life
• Author: Backhouse, Stephen
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Publication Date: 2016
• ISBN: 9780310520894

About Stephen Backhouse

Stephen Backhouse (DPhil, Oxford) is the founder and director of Tent Theology, a venture that designs and delivers theology programmes to local churches. He is the Dean of Theology in the Local Church for Westminster Theological Centre and was formerly the Lecturer in Social and Political Theology at St Mellitus College. He is a historian of Christian thought, an expert on the work of Søren Kierkegaard and a recognised authority on the political theology of nations and nationalism. He is the author of many publications, including the award-winning popular biography Kierkegaard: A Single Life (Zondervan, 2016) and the Zondervan Essential Companion to Christian History (Zondervan, 2019). He has lived in the United States, and makes his home in Britain and Canada.